Acetaminophen Use Alters Sex Hormones, May Cause Birth Defects?

Marlene Busko

February 19, 2018

Acetaminophen (paracetamol) use has been linked with a depletion of sulfated sex hormones in a large metabolomic study, and the findings suggest that fetal exposure to the drug could even be linked with risk of male urogenital malformation at birth.

Acetaminophen has been used for over 50 years, and more than half of women take it for pain relief while pregnant, but recent data, including animal-model and human-epidemiologic studies, suggest it may have some unexpected side effects.

"The current work identifies depletion of sulfated sex hormones as a potential mechanism" for genital malformation at birth in boys, say Isaac V Cohen, a PharmD candidate at the University California, San Diego, and who works at Human Longevity, in San Diego, California, and colleagues, in an article published online February 1 in EBioMedicine.

"The surprising thing that we observed in people who were taking acetaminophen (paracetamol) was that all of them had a peculiar profile in hormone metabolites," senior author Amalio Telenti, MD, from J Craig Venter Institute, in La Jolla, California, explained to Medscape Medical News.

The researchers speculated that they might find liver dysfunction with large doses of acetaminophen, "because that is normal toxicity," but surprisingly they found that acetaminophen was associated with changes in certain hormonal metabolites.

For example, the effect of taking acetaminophen on pregnen-diol disulfate was roughly equivalent to the effect of 35 years of aging, or the normal decrease in levels seen in menopause.

However, the effect only lasts 2 days, Telenti noted. "Three days after you took the acetaminophen you would be back to your chronological age."

Nevertheless, given "epidemiologists are concerned that the people with animal models are concerned, and now we have data saying [acetaminophen] does modify some of the hormones," Telenti said, "I would try to be cautious until we understand better."

"I'm not saying that there is a risk to taking acetaminophen because you have a headache," he said. However, "I would not like to take acetaminophen every day for 1 month during pregnancy."

Common OTC Painkiller, Reproductive Health Concerns

Even though acetaminophen is one of the most common pain medications used worldwide, there is a lack of consensus about its mechanism of action, and more recently, growing concern about possible adverse effects on reproductive health.

Acetaminophen has also falsely elevated continuous glucose monitor readings by a large margin in some patients with diabetes, which is a cause for concern as these devices are increasingly being adopted.

In the new study, Cohen and colleagues enrolled 455 active adults age 18 years and older and performed an analysis of more than 700 metabolites in 208 participants to establish a metabolomic profile. They then tested the training model in the other 247 participants.

They found that 19 of the 208 participants were likely taking acetaminophen based on the presence of acetaminophen and its seven metabolites, and this use affected a unique subset of sulfated sex hormones.

The model was validated in 1880 individuals of European ancestry in the TwinsUK cohort and 1235 individuals of African American and Hispanic ancestry from the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study.

"Individuals who took acetaminophen," they note, "had very low levels of neurosteroids such as pregnenolone sulfate and DHEAS [dehydroepiandrosterone], a mechanism that could synergize with acetaminophen's known mode of action in the central nervous system that implicates the COX [cyclooxygenase], vanilloid, and endocannabinoid systems."

Moreover, "the current work showcases the use of pharmacometabolomics to identify unexpected effects of a commonly used drug, acetaminophen, on hormone metabolism," according to the researchers. "Closer scrutiny of this commonly used medication is warranted," they add.

"These findings are significant for they showcase how the body is impacted by seemingly innocuous everyday medications like Tylenol," said Telenti in a press release by Human Longevity. "There are hundreds of other drugs that no one has done this research for. We delineate a general strategy that should be applied broadly in the study of medications in common use."

The study was funded by Human Longevity. Cohen and Telenti have reported no relevant financial disclosures. Disclosures for the other authors are listed in the article.

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Marlene Busko

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